I have mixed feelings about needing a female mentor. I love science, I am a woman, I lack appropriate female mentors, etc., etc. I have always worked for men and I tend to be the kind of girl that works well with men and it makes me wonder if I really need a female mentor. I am grateful to have been taught by men who treat me as equals and I wouldn’t really want anything different. The only time I feel I would really need a woman’s perspective on things is when I decide to have a family and a career. Along those lines I found a recent interview with some of the female Nobel Prize winners to be interesting. It provides two different perspectives (family or no family) from four different women. I found it very encouraging and very enlightening and it made me want to call up Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider and beg them to be my mentors. I guess my point here is that I DO want a strong, successful female mentor but I also want to be one of the guys and treated as such. Perhaps this is asking too much. Perhaps not.
-
The Two Dog Blog by Lauren Blair
The world as seen through the eyes of a 20-something postdoc vixen living in New England but born and raised in the south. Yeehaw!
-
Hello Mentor, are you there? It's me Lauren.
- Date:
- Tuesday, 24 Nov ember 2009 - 16:17 UTC
Last updated: Tuesday, 24 Nov 2009 - 16:17 UTC
-
Comments
-
I’ve had several female mentors, and they were entirely different with these things. Some put family before work, others put work before family. And none of them were perfect. Sometimes they did things that made me wish they spent more time at work (my MSc supervisor worked 4 days a week and was on maternity leave while I was writing up) and other times I wished they would go home and spend time with their family on the weekend (leave me alone when I’m working on Sunday!)
So in terms of role models, I guess the variety has shown me that there are totally different ways to deal with work/family balance.
I would think that it is depending on which mentor you find. Maybe the woman/man isn’t as important for you as having someone with “the same” view on things as you? That said, I am very grateful for the female mentor I have and the male mentor I have too… they look at things differently, and I would not nessecarily say that they are “gender bound” but it was very good for me to get some practical advice from a woman when we discussed certain things in term of family/carreer as well as some “hurdles in attitudes” that can be visible as a slightly younger woman in the science field sometimes…
With this I guess I want to say, diversity might be a way to go here? And if you have never had a female mentor, maybe open for one and see if it really is that different? (or what they can teach you that some others might not be able to?)
Those are good points. I guess I always assumed there were some things that only a woman would understand. I’ve never had a female mentor but sometimes I get aggravated at the lack of them (there are NONE in my department). There was a woman from MIT who came to speak here a few weeks ago and I fell in love with her style. She was so confident and intelligent and she wasn’t at all boring. She mentioned her family in passing and she just seemed like exactly what I want to be ‘when I grow up.’ Sometimes I just want someone like that to go have coffee with and pick their brain. Someone to tell me that they understand where I’m coming from and where I want to go. I guess that’s more or a role model than a mentor.
I’ve never had a female mentor but sometimes I get aggravated at the lack of them…
I feel the same way. Even now that I’m looking for a mentor (I’ve never really had one), I find there isn’t really anyone that I can identify with or think “Hey, that’s who I want to be like.” I think Åsa has a great point in trying to find someone that has the same views as you, or someone who you think you would like to model (at least a portion of) your life on, regardless of their sex.
Perhaps this person, like you said, is more of a role model. I suppose this is why it’s good to have several mentors – different people helping you with different aspects of your career and life. It is hard to find one person that can mentor you in all of these areas.
I find myself a little overwhelmed with the mentor thing. It’s a new thing for me, as it was never brought up in my undergrad or even my grad years (until the last one). So, I’m finding it a bit difficult to set up mentorships, or even deciding what I need/want out of them.
I think that people are just people, and gender is less important than whether you get on with them. The two people in my life whom I regard as having been mentors were much older than me, and tended to have a hands-off attitude.
This all actually reminded me of an old blog post of Noah’s about Cori Bargmann, which also mentions her reputation of being a great mentor.
a bit more info on one of my ideal mentors